Four people have been arrested in Spain over their suspected involvement in linked credit card theft and virus writing offences.

Two 17-year-olds were arrested in Alicante on Wednesday and charged with writing a Trojan horse that allowed them to control the webcams of compromised machines at a local college. The duo allegedly used potentially embarrassing footage obtained through the ruse to blackmail victims.

As part of the same inquiry (codenamed Operation Praxis), police arrested two adults in Madrid. Investigators reckon these unnamed suspects used the same strain of malware to pinch sensitive data from compromised machines for the purposes of ID theft. The pair allegedly ran up to €60,000 in fraudulent credit card bills before they were busted.

Operation Praxis is not the first time Spanish police have faced webcam-related online crime, net security firm Sophos notes. In February 2005 a Spanish computer student was fined for spying on a young woman using her webcam, as well as monitoring her online chat conversations. ®

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